National Westminster Bank and Return to Number 2 Brook Street (EHER 34620)

An early 19th century building that was likely always occupied by a business. Utilised as a branch of Nat West bank from the 1960s. Listing and original interpretation as an 18th century house thought to be incorrect.

18th century house, now bank and offices. <1> <2> April 2018. Level 3 building survey. 2 High Street Manningtree is a red-brick structure of late-Georgian appearance on the southern side of the High Street at its junction with Brook Street on the west. The building is listed at grade II as nos. 2 High Street and 2 Brook Street, and is described in Historic England’s schedule as a ‘former house, now a bank and offices of the 18th century or earlier, with later alterations’. In fact there is no evidence of any fabric that pre-dates circa 1800, or that the building was ever a private house. The entire building extends to 14.25 m against the High Street and 13 m against Brook Street, and the former range was divided by an axial chimney into a large eastern room of 8.25 m in length by 5.7 m in width and a smaller room of 4.8 m in length at the western corner. A date range of 1790-1820, and most probably circa 1810, is consistent with the key features of the original fabric such as the restrained exterior with only a plain string course to the High Street elevation and the narrow, tall-sectioned joists of both the ground and first-floor ceilings – all of which are of machine-sawn pine. The flat arches of rubbed brick are of good quality and the Flemish Bond walls were probably tuck-pointed to the street elevations but their character has been lost by repointing in cement. The sash windows appear largely original, with narrow glazing bars and no ‘horns’ to the corners of the upper sashes (a post-1850s introduction), while the roof structure of staggered butt-purlins with pegged joints is entirely typical of the late-18th and in particular the early-19th century. Until its closure in 2015 the entire lower storey was occupied by the National Westminster Bank which was reported at the time to have been established on the site for approximately 50 years. This is consistent with the 1960s bank facade of painted concrete to the left of the High Street range, and with the Ordnance Survey which has labelled the adjoining property at 4 High Street on the east as a bank since the 1920s but first indicated no. 2 in the same way in 1982. However photographs of circa 1900 show a late-19th century shop facade in precisely the same position, then occupied by Henry Poole, grocer and draper, who was listed as such in Kellys Directory for 1894 (but not that of 1882) and was no longer in business by the edition of 1912. <3>